War, migration and violence are all traumatic events that can trigger mental or physical trauma, especially in childhood and adolescence. There are many ways to overcome trauma. When writing down personal traumas some German authors have tried to bring their emotional and physical wounds on to paper as a method of coping with them. This way of "healing" was also chosen by the Austrian writer of Russian Jewish origin, Vladimir Vertlib, who tells of the odyssey of a Soviet-Jewish immigrant family on their way to the West in his book "Zwischenstationen". This paper discusses concepts of trauma research in literature, then moves to a broad outline of trauma in relation to contemporary German migration literature considered and their portrayal of cities as places of memory. The paper later focuses on the topics and motives readers find in Vertlib’s novels in order to demonstrate the relevance of his work for the portrayal of trauma, its relation with the city as a place of traumatic processes, and the healing power of writing for collective memory.